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VOUGIERS (France), Aug. 4 – As France faces a 2035 deadline to phase out new combustion engine cars, workers in the industry fear their days are numbered too.
While optimism reigns in some regions of France, specifically in the north of the country, where a “Battery Valley” is forming, workers at device brands are pessimistic.
While the sale of new petrol and diesel cars will only be allowed for the next decade in Europe, the industry that employs another 200,000 people in France is facing a forced march towards change.
“The transition (to electric vehicles) may have already been made when Walor bought us, but they didn’t invest,” says Séverine Person, quality specialist at the company’s facility in Vouziers, in the Ardennes region (northeast of France).
Walor bought the factory in 2018. Su production of connecting rods for tractors and trucks is threatened by the switch to electric vehicles, but the demand for transmission differential housings and engine manifolds is expected to undergo major changes.
Walor bought last year through a German fund specializing in the recovery of struggling companies and is on the hunt to sell the Vouziers site and others nearby.
“Before, Citroën distributed frames to everyone in the Ardennes. They didn’t go to the other side of the world to look for spare parts,” said Bruno Bodson, union delegate at the CFDT.
Person and his colleagues are resigned to the probable closure of the factory, according to their order book.
But the atmosphere is different in the north of the country, where several battery “gigafactories” are being built, including that of the Automotive Cells Company (ACC) in Douvrin.
The joint venture includes automakers Stellantis and Mercedes, as well as French oil and fuel giant TotalEnergies.
ACC built its massive battery factory on the basis of a factory that makes engines for Stellantis, whose cars come with the renowned French brands Citroën and Peugeot.
Stellantis said the location was selected to meet a “social need” to train factory employees. The workforce has grown from about 5,000 people in the 1980s to 700 today.
At the joint venture’s battery education center, Stellantis-Douvrin workers receive 12 weeks of education on how to supervise the battery plant’s highly automated production lines.
Opportunity to move
According to the Automotive Platform (PFA), a professional agreement that brings together companies in the sector, between now and 2026 some 17,000 jobs will be created in battery production gigafactories and facilities to recycle them.
Although the goal is to hire massively in the sector, it is not certain that this will be enough to prevent many employees from being left behind.
The latest study carried out in the French metallurgical industry, in 2021, shows that the transition to electric vehicles would jeopardize 65,000 jobs in the sector until 2030.
Bernard Jullien, an economist and researcher specializing in the French automobile industry, estimates that in the next 10 to 15 years, 40,000 jobs will be lost in the auto parts sector due to the transition from oil engines to electric ones.
The effect can be mitigated simply by the fact that many employees in the industry are about to retire.
Ludovic Bouvier, regional leader of the CGT metalworkers’ union, fears that car brands and their suppliers will stick to the metal industry’s style.
As the industry comes under intense pressure to cut costs, “Europe’s announcement on the end of internal combustion engines offers an opportunity for brands to relocate their production,” he said.
Bouvier is basically targeting Stellantis, which produces its new Citroën electric sedan in Slovakia. Renault produces its R5 sedan in France.
A recent study by two climate groups found that reducing the human labor needed to make electric vehicles could favor the manufacture of small vehicles in Europe.
But for economist Jullien, the electrification of cars will most likely be accompanied by further offshoring, which will reduce total employment in the French car industry to 100,000 or even less.